Project

Swamp Couple No-Sew Costumes

Start with a simple dress, jacket, and tie -- nothing you'll want to wear again in its original form. Have fun with the wide selection of silk and plastic leaves and flowers that are available; you need not follow our choices.

Martha Stewart Living Newsletter

materials

Dress

Jacket

Tie

Wide Selection of Silk or Plastic Leaves or Flowers (we used Silk Spiderwort)

Leaves and Plastic Maiden-Hair Ferns

Hot Glue

Scissors

Safety pins

2-inch length of slender ribbon

Bobby pins

steps

To make the dress, we cut the sleeves off a thrift-store dress and covered it by hot-gluing silk spiderwort leaves interspersed with plastic maiden-hair ferns. Put a dab of hot glue at the base of each leaf, leaving tip free; start gluing from top of dress. Do a design with the leaves, let vines crawl up your dress, or go for colors and patterns with roses, daisies, or flower petals.

To make the men's tie, first knot tie on wearer's neck, then cut through in back; use a safety pin to fasten in back for easy removal. We chose silk French-smilax vine, and hot-glued it onto the tie.

To make the jacket, we hot-glued plastic cedar branches onto the body and plastic maidenhair fern onto lapels and pockets. To make hat from an extra-large leaf, make a tiny double loop from a 2-inch length of slender ribbon: Bring both ends to center of ribbon and glue in place; then hot-glue ribbon loops to back of leaf. Attach with bobby pins through loops.